Career Enhancement Program ABSTRACT The goal of the Career Enhancement Program is to prepare physicians and scientists for independent careers in translational research in sarcoma. It is our hope that the women and men funded through this process will spend their professional lifetimes conducting translational research specifically in this set of diseases and that they will become leaders in their fields of interest. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) is ideally suited for this task, with substantial physical and faculty resources and more than a century of experience training physicians and scientists of the highest quality. Our institutional environment includes a K12 for translational science training and a K30 for the training of clinical investigators. In the Career Enhancement Program, we will enhance the formal training programs that already exist at MSK. We will encourage more physicians to focus on translational research in sarcoma. We will also provide 1-year partial support for five new junior faculty investigators who commit their careers to translational research in sarcoma. In our efforts to recruit these investigators, we will draw upon existing programs at MSK that recruit, train, and mentor scientists and physician-scientists. We will budget at least $75,000 yearly for this program, including $50,000 from the SPORE award itself and at least $25,000 in funds pledged by MSK. The CEP will work closely with department heads and fellowship leaders to match the $75,000 per year of CEP funds with other institutional funding sources (e.g. philanthropic funding) available through the respective Departments to add an additional $50,000 to $75,000 per year. We anticipate that this supplementation will bring total funding for such a new faculty recruit to $125,000 to $150,000, which will provide additional incentive for these graduating fellows to accept new faculty positions in sarcoma and to commit at least 80% of their time to sarcoma research. To continually educate both trainees and SPORE staff, we will utilize regularly scheduled conferences, data presentations by members of the SPORE research projects and cores, and presentations by invited speakers. The Career Enhancement Program will be directed by a Career Enhancement Committee, chaired by Dr. Meera Hameed and co-chaired by Dr. Hedvig Hricak.